Can morality be scientific? News from “Beyond Belief”

Last updated on: November 14, 2014 at 5:56 am by Epiphenom

Can morality be scientific? News from “Beyond Belief” 2014-11-14T05:56:31+01:00 Epiphenom

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Well, the “Beyond Belief” meeting has been and gone, and while we wait for the videos to be posted details are a bit thin. Pharyngula says that it was all very interesting, but a bit of a mish-mash. The New Scientist’s report on the meeting (available on the Think Humanism forum), has a few gems. Apparently, the meeting was less stridently atheist than last year:

Last year’s event was something of an “atheist love fest” said some, who urged a more wide-ranging discourse this time round. While all present agreed that rational, evidence-based thinking should always be the basis of how we live our lives, it was also conceded that people are irrational by nature, and that faith, religion, culture and emotion must also be recognised as part of the human condition.

The New Scientist also gives this gem, on the limitations of reason:

The first firebrand is lobbed into the audience by Edward Slingerland, an expert on ancient Chinese thought and human cognition at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. “Religion is not going away,” he announced. Even those of us who fancy ourselves rationalists and scientists, he said, rely on moral values – a set of distinctly unscientific beliefs.

Where, for instance, does our conviction that human rights are universal come from? “Humans’ rights to me are as mysterious as the holy trinity,” he told the audience at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. “You can’t do a CT scan to show where humans’ rights are, you can’t cut someone open and show us their human rights,” he pointed out. “It’s not an empirical thing, it’s just something we strongly believe. It’s a purely metaphysical entity.”

Slingerhand’s pronouncement has Larry Moran spitting:

Oops. I’ve got news for you, Prof. Slingerland, you can’t count yourself as a rationalist if you think that morality requires religion. And you can’t lay claim to being a scientist if you think that moral values are unscientific.

Slingerland makes a valid point, but unfortunately illustrates it with a gross misconception. As I posted earlier, just because just because something is intangible doesn’t mean it isn’t scientific. The mind exists – although you can’t do an autopsy on it. Language similarly doesn’t exist in any physical sense, yet is certainly open to scientific investigation. Information and concepts such as these exist only insofar as the physical, natural world exists. They depend on the existence of a physical reality, they are products of that physical reality, and they can be investigated empirically.

But Prof Moran is being unfair. Moral psychology is a bona fide science, no doubt about that. But moral judgments (and non-empirically justified concepts such as human rights)are frequently non scientific. It’s not simply that people use intuition rather than careful analysis (although that often happens too). Rather, these a decisions that cannot be made by recourse to science – they cannot be decided empirically. That’s because they rely on subjective judgments regarding values (e.g. how much is a human life worth? How much risk are we willing to take?). Science can inform these decisions, but cannot dictate them. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy gives a concrete examples:

Consider questions regarding “normal functioning” in mental health care: Are the answers to these questions statistical, or evaluative? For example, is “normal” mental health simply the psychological condition of most people, or is it good mental health? If the former, the issue is, at least in principle, empirically decidable; if the latter, the issues must be decided, if they can be decided, by arguments about value.

This is a fundamental dichotomy that is often forgotten by science enthusiasts!

Edit: A video of Edward Slingerhand’s talk is available, so you can judge for yourself.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

November 8, 2007

Described as holding "extreme Darwinian" views...

Next Post

November 14, 2007 Management guru speaks on climate change

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Causes of religion - evolution Causes of religion - psychological Causes of religion - social Demographics Digest Effects of religion - health Effects of religion - psychological Effects of religion - social Notifications Politics Uncategorized

Select a Month March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

How many visions does the book of Revelation contain?

Select your answer to see how you score.

10 7 5 12